A friend of mine wrote me the following:
"I would be interested in seeing if anyone on the net has a
comment about Craig Venter's deal.
He is the scientist at the National Institutes of Health
who discovered a way to produce thousands of DNA lookalike
fragments, purged of all the noncoding, presumably nonsense
segments. They're call cDNA, for complementary DNA, and
he may have found a way to shortcut the massive Human Genome
Project. Two difficulties, at least: 1--NIH has filed for
patents--on human DNA! And we're talking thousands of genes,
whose function he doesn't pretend to know at this point.
2--He's leaving NIH, to join a new foundation set up just for
him by a venture capital firm called Health Care Investors of Boston,
which is also setting up a company for the project.
There was an argument that at least these patents would belong to
the federal government, which might be assumed to act in the best
interests of (U.S., rich) humanity, but now that Venter has
"sold out" to a private firm, any future genes he discovers
via this method, will be available only to this company...Of
course, the patents have only just been FILED for, and no
one knows whether they will be granted. The usual obstacle
suggested is that he doesn't know the use of his cDNA
pieces, since he doesn't know the function of the gene they
represent. However, they're perfectly useful as is as probes
and research tools, and besides, he/NIH can always add new
uses later in the patent process."
Any comments? E-mail or posted replies are fine.
Also appreciated would be any suggestions for cross-posting.
Daniel H. Silver "Memory is a kind
Department of Psychology, UCB of accomplishment,
dsilver at garnet.berkeley.edu a sort of renewal . . ."
Disclaimer: me not ucb ((((((((((((((((*))))))))))))))))
